[e2e] on local ethernet throughput?

[David P. Reed]

The issue as I understand it was that the only termination equipment 
available for companies to terminate DSL at the CO was the so-called DSLAM 
(invented for ATM circuit switching).  And the customer side equipment was 
Ethernet on one side and ATM over DSL on the other.

PPPoE only capped the kludgery involved.

If equipment companies could have ignored the ATM madness of bell-shaped 
companies (carrier class equals ATM...), then we would have had packets 
over DSL, and an Ethernet or IP-based authentication (like 802.1x).

At 01:23 PM 10/24/2001 -0700, Andrew Smith wrote:
>There are plenty of other possibilities that involve "user" authentication
>in the control plane that don't need to touch the data plane packet
>encapsulation. One example is what we did for IEEE 802.1X - an on/off switch
>for most data packets and a way of intercepting a control plane message (EAP
>over a new L2 encapsulation) were the only data plane intrusions. A much
>cleaner design, I think (only works for a switched pt-to-pt topology, or
>some emulation of that like 802.11 wireless, of course).
>
>I put "user" in quotes above because I think that what the DSL deployers
>wanted was "payer authentication", not necessarily "user" (I have to give my
>"user" password to anyone in my household for them to use the DSL link with
>a PPPoE session and my provider makes me use that same password to use their
>email services :-( (hence the new email address!).
>
>But this isn't really the place to gripe about the power of monopolies etc.
>even though it impacts the "end-to-end-ness" of the service ...
>
>Andrew Smith
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: end2end-interest-admin at postel.org
>[mailto:end2end-interest-admin at postel.org]On Behalf Of Woojune Kim
>Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 12:29 PM
>To: end2end-interest at postel.org
>Subject: Re: [e2e] on local ethernet throughput?
>
>
>Hello,
>
>I was just wondering about the comment w.r.t PPPoE being an abomination.
>
>
>While I agree it is a complete mess and not very pretty, I think it was
>deployed because network operators had a real problem : authenticating
>users and making money when deploying DSL modems.
>
>I've always wondered if there are any other methods that could have been
>used.
>
>thanks
>
>============================================
>
>Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 09:11:41 -0600 (MDT)
>From: Vernon Schryver <vjs at calcite.rhyolite.com>
>To: end2end-interest at postel.org
>Subject: Re: [e2e] on local ethernet throughput?
>
> > From: Graham Cope <G.Cope at ftel.co.uk>
>
> > > we still teach students about bridging?
>
> > And some of us in the DSL community might suggest that you teach them
> > about PPPoE as well.
>
>If people had been taught the facts of bridging instead of merely
>the trade rag and salescritter "bullet items," we might not have
>the abomination that is PPPoE.
>
>
>Vernon Schryver    vjs at rhyolite.com

- David
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